SCADA Software – Babcock Case Study

In today’s high octane world, maintaining stability in places such as airports is vital. With millions of people coming and going through these hubs daily, airports must work to provide an organized well automated system. One such location is London’s Heathrow airport, the third largest air terminal in the world. With that being said, the terminals at Heathrow reached out to a contractor, Babcock Airports, to overhaul the management of their baggage system.

Conveyor belts are almost used in every facet of an airport, and ensuring that they are running smoothly is paramount to the overall success of the operation. Conveyor belts are used through check-in, baggage claim, and TSA security, so the margin of error needs to be minimal. When conveyor belts fail, the infrastructure of the airport is slowed up and this causes a negative domino effect that ripples down to the dismay of passengers.

Babcock Airports reached out to Recursion Software to run a Wonderware SCADA system to control the processes of these conveyor belts. Faced with no connectivity with the public internet, Recursion Software’s SCADA system ran on a local network. With this wireless connectivity, the conveyor belts could be monitored wirelessly. The wireless SCADA system functionality is native to the company, as competitor’s lack this wireless, free-flow technology all while maintaining system security.